Another Highly Anticipated Title Won't Be At E3

E3 may be the biggest gaming event of the year, with all of the big studios rolling out news and information on highly anticipated titles for home consoles, PC and VR headsets. But, it won't be the place to spotlight or highlight developmental progress on one highly anticipated title that's currently in development: Shenmue 3.

Over on the official Kickstarter page for Shenmue 3, developer Ys Net posted up a blog post and a new developmental progress video of their work so far. In the blog post they talk about how backers and fans have been asking them about whether or not they will be making an appearance at any upcoming game shows in June, specifically E3 2017, which is set to take place in Los Angeles, California.

YS Net simply stated that they won't have time to participate at any game conventions in June because they're devoting the entire month to the development of Shenmue 3. The team stated...

While our schedule has yet to be finalized, we will be devoting June to game development and as a result, will unfortunately not be participating in any game shows.

This is to be expected, since they're still neck-deep in development after they originally announced Shenmue 3 back at E3 2015. The game was a surprise entrant in Sony's line-up of announcements during their stage conference, with fans greeting Yu Suzuki with a standing ovation. The game was announced alongside the opening of the Kickstarter page, which went live that very same day and garnered millions of dollars in backer donations in a matter of days.

They've been toiling away slowly at Shenmue 3, working with Epic's Unreal Engine 4 in order to help bring the game to life.

Suzuki had noted that it would require about $10 million for them to really achieve what they wanted from the game. They managed more than $6 million alone from Kickstarter and continued receiving funds from crowdfunding through the site.

It makes sense that they're focusing more on the development aspects instead of touring around and hitting up every single trade show. They've opted to keep their heads low and move forward with development in order to get the game closer to a finished state instead of parading around what they've accomplished so far.

Speaking of what they've accomplished so far... the recent developer diary that they put out showcases their advancements with the modeling and character creation.

They've spent a good deal of time working on new characters never before seen in the Shenmue series, and they've been refining them for the final release in Shenmue 3. The added benefits of Unreal Engine 4 should help the development process move along a lot faster, but the game is still a long ways off from release.

Of course, don't be surprised if we at least see some progress coming out of the project by the time the Tokyo Game Show is ready to roll around in September. For now, though, Shenmue 3 joins Beyond Good & Evil 2 on the E3 sidelines.